Christopher Hitchens.

Christopher Hitchens has died.   I was saddened by this news.  He has been one of my favorite thinkers on the subject of religion and discourse.  I was sad that I would never get to meet him.   And then he told me that I would. Not in some vague way of some supposed afterlife, but right here and now.  His works are at my disposal to learn from or fail to do so as I choose.

The nature of discourse and argument Part 1

The term argument leads a double life. In common usage it means to fight about or to disagree, usually loudly, and sometimes with thrown objects. However in the formal sense of logic it means the discussion or addressing of a topic. Now these should be easily distinguished; I am having an argument with my wife versus the argument is lacking in rigor. But for the sake of ease in reading, I will use argument in the logical sense only and use disagreement or fight for the other while writing this post, and most probably this blog.